


Dark side of the mood

by OpenBar (TheDreamingSpires)



Series: we defy explanation [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Mild Smut, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 10:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15705840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDreamingSpires/pseuds/OpenBar
Summary: Green has never been one of the shades of grey Bruce works in, but perhaps that is what makes it all so perfect, in the end.The full story of Hal and Bruce, as glimpsed in 'Hope and other narcotics' and 'Indefinitely Baby'.





	Dark side of the mood

Bruce didn’t really do ‘feelings’, at least if he could help it. He preferred working in clear black and white, fact and fiction, basing any decision on action and logic. He trusted his gut, its instincts honed from years of trial and error, far more than he trusted his heart. Guts were what drove firemen to run into burning buildings safely, were what got Olympians over the finish line first. They were what guided him whenever he came head to head with the Joker, or Harvey Two-Face, or Superman. Hearts were what led him to sitting alone in a hotel room, aged twenty-four, holding a rejected engagement ring in a velour Tiffany box, watching Selina sashay into the night without a second thought. Nothing truly good had ever happened when he had trusted his heart, potentially because it was faulty, had been since Crime Alley. His gut, however, was what had been born in the vacuum where a heart should be. It protected him where no one or nothing else did.

His sons, as always, presented an obvious exception to this rule, but he was used to that. The Batfamily, with its sprawling, incestuous branches of waifs and strays, was something he could never really have planned for, certainly not as a nineteen year old bashing down the doors of the best dojos of Asia and demanding an audience with the greatest teachers of his time. His sons with their stories of woe, their stables of problems, their seas of personal issues. Not that he would swap them for the world. He wasn’t convinced he would be anywhere near the man he was today, or even alive today, had he not followed a policy of obsessive adoption of creatures who, he now realised, reminded him of himself. He equally knew that his lack of heart had driven them away. Dick had run, too kind-hearted to be able to bear Bruce after a point. Jason had died, and come back with no heart, or at least no heart which Bruce could appeal to. Opposite ends of the spectrum, both created by his mistakes. His refusal to open fully his heart to those who had only come to him because he had allowed his heart to take over, even for the slightest second. Driven away by his staunch following of a single path, which was very different to how he said it was.

When Dick had come back to him, come sidling back into the Batcave to try and protect Tim from something, potentially Bruce, he had explained that one of the reasons he was so determined to leave those years ago was because he had felt like he was being forced into becoming just like Bruce. _“But even that wasn’t good enough,”_ he had railed, one eye on the door to make sure Tim didn’t return from his juice-and-cookie break early and walk into a firefight. _“Being like you isn’t what you want, but we can’t not be like you either. Its like you don’t want Robins, but for fuck knows what reason, you still collect us like some kind of half-crazed old twitcher.”_ Bruce had been tempted to point out that twitchers just watched birds, didn’t collect them. That would have made Dick laugh, when he was a teenager. Now it would have just made him snarl, storm off, take Tim out for the day. One day, Bruce was certain, they wouldn’t come back from one of their outings, not if Dick could help it. _“I just don’t want you to make my mistakes,”_ Bruce implored, aware that his tone as heard by Dick was actually a growl rather than distress, what his heart intended. _“Taking you in keeps you safe for a moment, but then Gotham comes calling.”_ Dick had snorted at that ripping his domino mask off for the first time in the conversation and hurling it at the Batcomputer. _“We can never be safe with you, Bruce, but we can be happy. And for some reason you prevent that, make us think that happiness isn’t in our reach.”_ He’d gestured at his chest, where he had a soulmark in a position that matched Bruce’s own. _“Force us to make someone else suffer too, which is the cruellest bit.”_

It wasn’t cruelty which had made him prevent Dick, and Jason after him, from doing something about their soulmarks, although Bruce understood why they perceived it in this way, once they were old enough to start hankering for a great something which they didn’t really understand. His now well-used speech on protecting their soulmates was rooted in an honest belief that what was right was to isolate oneself from everyone, to avoid hurting yourself, or anyone else. To some extent, he rationalised, it was a continuation of his golden mantra of never killing. Partially, he was certain that once he killed, put one criminal down for good, he would be unable to stop. It was also a question of damage control, to both his own soul and those around him. If he, or Dick, or Jason, or Tim, or any of them, had dragged an unwitting civilian into the chaotic mess that was his life, his family, his League, then he would be doing untold harm. He tried to vocalise this to Superman once, when he’d drunk a little too much at a League Christmas party and Superman had enquired, his interest stemming from a yearning for something which Kryptonians didn’t have to think about. Only humans had soulmarks. Clark had considered it deeply, taken a long drink of his disgusting Kansan craft beer, peering out from the window of the Watchtower and following the path of a shooting star with his gaze. _“I don’t know, Bruce,”_ he’d mused, _“not sure I could spend my whole life hiding from someone who is meant for me. Surely if they’re meant for you, they can deal with all this?”_ Bruce had turned away, folding his arms across his chest. _“That assumes I was always meant to be this way, and I like to think that the universe isn’t that cruel.”_

\---

Hard as it was, his soulmark had been left unexplored from when he became the Bat. It hadn’t always been that way. As a child, he had been completely obsessed with his mark. He knew his parents weren’t a soul-couple, that they had married out of mutual respect and gain, as all good billionaires did. Likewise, from ten years of listening at doors and reading between the lines, he knew that there was so much more happiness to be gained than in what the infamous Waynes had. What they had was stately, regal, enviable, but it wasn’t love, and it never had been. This obsession had become unhealthy when, at the death of his parents, he still hadn’t had a mark of his own, which seemed to him to prove some form of sick point: he wanted to act on what he did not even have in the first place.

He wished he could have said that the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, his links to true humanity, had marked the end of his desperate cleaving to some primeval form of tying people together, but in fact it had initially only heightened his obsession. Bruce could still remember sitting under a tree at Gotham Academy, bruised and aching from falling from the very same tree not fifteen minutes earlier, in one of his early attempts at escape from a school he viewed as utterly pointless, more prison than safe-haven. A twelve-year-old boy ripped apart at the seams, silently trying to catalogue injuries so that he might hide them from Alfred later, as he only wanted to destroy himself, and seeing Alfred worry was the last thing he ever wanted to do. He’d peeled off his blazer before the great climb, and so all he had to do to investigate the mysterious pulsing pain on his chest was to undo the first few buttons of his now grass-stained dress shirt, his black and red striped school tie already discarded alongside the blazer in the dewy grass.

The strange scrawl he had found there, stencilled across his birdlike chest, had produced the first true emotion he had had in the two years since he had changed from a child with two parents to one with none, a beacon in the numbness which itself now accounted for most of his personality. He wasn’t sure what to call this feeling, something mixed between longing and fear and exhilaration and anger. It made him feel hot, and cold, and happy, and sad, and he wanted to rush home and tell his mother, since kind Mr Kennedy who taught French was known for phoning parents and letting children go home early on days like this. But Bruce didn’t have a mother, and he had no home to go to since Alfred was out visiting a friend and there was no one else to collect him from school, and he didn’t have French next period but Chemistry, and Mrs Jamieson never let anyone leave the lab once classes had commenced.

He hated it, whatever this feeling was. The numbness was safe, the numbness was all he knew now, and the numbness was all he deserved. He stood up, carefully pulling his tie into the neat Windsor his father had taught him when he had first started having to wear a tie to school. His blazer was slightly damp, the gold-thread trim stained dark, and Mrs Jamieson would certainly notice, and ask why he had been out in the rain when school rules were very clear that if it rained it was indoor recess. Judging by his oversized watch, one of his father’s treasured Omegas with the gleaming gears hidden under decades-old glass, Bruce was also getting on for five minutes late, which called for a tardy slip, his third of the semester, which also meant a note home. Bruce didn’t particularly care, not any more. Alfred had given up on trying to reason him, and like the two before it, Mrs Jamieson’s note would end up casually thrown onto the fire in the parlour, and another unspoken check would be added to the list Bruce knew Alfred had been given by a very expensive child grief counsellor about _childhood depression_.

\---

Bruce met Hal in what was, to all intents and purposes, a bombsite, which as it happened was also a pretty decent analogy for their relationship. Hal was rash and brash and bright, obvious from a hundred metres away with his glowing suit and yelled instructions. The only thing about him which Bruce really had time for was his understanding of when a hierarchy needed to be followed, when someone needed to take charge. The main issue with this, however, was that they both thought that they should be the one _taking_ charge.

“He’s _impossible,”_ Bruce growled at Tim one evening, after the second meeting of the newly minted Justice League had run late. He had missed dinner on a day he had promised to make it in at a decent time, and for some unknown but godforsaken reason his chest ached as though he’d been suckerpunched. Alfred had left a portion of fish pie in the imported Aga, which Bruce now picked through with gusto, dimly aware of Tim flipping through a newspaper opposite him. Bruce was very aware that he could challenge Alfred’s _no eating in the Cave_ rule, but he still had enough childhood fear of the kindly old man to keep his dinner in the main room, away from anything Bat related.

“Let me guess, he complains? Argues? Gives a distinct impression of ‘my way or the highway’? Funny, that sounds pretty damn familiar.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes, biting into a prawn to give himself time to regroup. Tim laughed in response, throwing the paper aside. “He’s Bizarro you, Bruce. Face it.”

“I don’t understand why he can’t just listen to reason,” Bruce replied, aware that he was being petulant but failing to care. “He is neither the most experienced, nor the most powerful, and yet he insists on debating every point.” Bruce paused for a second, considered the prawn speared on his fork. “No, that isn’t true, he disputes every point that concerns me. Superman, Wonder Woman, even the Flash get off without a whisper of complaint, but for some reason everything I say is the verbal equivalent to kicking a puppy.”

“If you were six and in a school playground, I’d say he liked you,” Tim mused, a grin on his face and tone irritatingly sing-song.

Bruce scoffed, sitting back in his chair, his plate empty. “I think it is clear he doesn’t like me,” he responded, deliberately obtuse. He scratched his chest, realising the pain was directly under the bandage he always covered his soulmark with before going on patrol, to give his soulmate some protection just in case he ever did get captured.

“Don’t be cute, it doesn’t suit you. You’ll get past it, Bruce. Its growing pains, and you’ve come up against someone who’s brand of alpha is just a bit too close to yours, and it rankles. Superman has a kind streak, Flash is a natural born clown, Aquaman is a literal king who doesn’t need to enter this pissing contest. God knows Diana is above this shit, too. You and Hal are the non-metahumans who are used to getting your own way, and who have actually had to do some work to get to where you are and be accepted.” Tim shrugged, seemingly surprised that Bruce was still listening. “Live and let live, maybe let him have his way occasionally, and you’ll get through. And if you don’t, then by the sounds of it he’ll be off back to the first star on the right and straight on til morning before you know it.”

Bruce wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but he’d raised some brilliant children. Misguided, maybe, but brilliant. He walked up to his bedroom deep in thought, pulling the heavy oak door closed behind him and unbuttoning his shirt as he did so. He hesitated for a moment, prodding at his tender chest, before pulling the bandage off. Normally he tried to ignore the dark splotches on his chest, but for the first time in years, he properly examined the mark. The mess of swirls and 3D cubes that lined his pec sent a pang through his heart, striking some cord. They were familiar, he was certain, but almost definitely because they were common doodles. That was it. 

\---

“Hal, brilliant to see you!” Bruce approached him with open arms, clapping him around the shoulder. It had been over a year since they first met, long enough for any of the initial difficulties to die down and their whole relationship to turn into one of mutual tolerance. They still argued, other members of the League still had to talk them down from full-on warfare occasionally, but it worked. They could trust each other with their lives, and in their lines of work, that was what counted. “How have you been? How’s the lovely Carol? More champagne?”

Hal smiled, running a hand through his chestnut hair and mussing it. Bruce could see the caution in his eyes, having only met ‘Bruce Wayne’ once or twice. It was normal, and equally present behind Wally’s intent blue gaze, but while Wally looked thrilled to be standing at a Wayne Enterprises gala with Linda on his arm, the lone Hal looked something close to terrified. Bruce wouldn’t know, he mused, he’d never seen Hal afraid before.

“More champagne would be great, thanks.” Hal mussed his hair again, apparently having forgotten he’d done it already. Under the chandeliers of the ballroom, strands of it glinted red, bleached in the California sun. If it were anyone other than Hal, Bruce thought, the deep green eyes and easy smile and beautifully disarrayed hair might have presented a problem, something all too enticing in the languid way he moved and the faultless frame of a pilot. But, this was Hal, who on their last meeting had ended a meeting with ‘No shit, Sherlock’ when Bruce had commented that, to solve the problem of the League growing too large, they would have to extend the meeting table. Any embers of attraction were drenched by a tide of common sense and mild irritation.

Hal bit his lip as Bruce passed him another glass, seeming slightly at a loss for words. “I’ve been well, thanks. Carol says hi, she’s sorry she couldn’t make it but she had a wedding to go to.”

“Not her own?” Bruce laughed, wracking his brains for the current relationship status of the Green Lantern. He’d been ‘travelling’ somewhere else in the sector for almost five months, basically cut off from the League. The great on-again, off-again that was Green Lantern and his girlfriend-cum-boss was a favoured topic of gossip in the League, largely because the fallout of the breakups was so immense that the drama was just too good to ignore. Not that Bruce paid attention to these things, he was more invested in the ability of one of the senior League members to do his job without refusing to go anywhere near the entire east coast because Carol was potentially at a conference in DC. From what he could remember, they were broken up, but then that never lasted. They normally got back together immediately post-mission. Wally would have known, Bruce chided himself, and more importantly would have happily shared the information. A truly good host knew these things in advance.

Not that he cared. This was just lip service to the Wayne reputation. In a moment he could abandon his lone teammate and find a socialite looking for a headline to finish up his night with.

“No, that’s next month,” Hal replied, mouth a thin line. “To Jamie from Tech.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t realise.”

Hal forced a smile and knocked back his champagne. “No worries, its all in the past. Great party, B. Go have fun, I’ll be safe over here with the mini quiches.”

“Are you sure?”

Hal smiled again, but this time it seemed genuine. “Are you kidding? From here I have a perfect view of Arthur trying to persuade that group of girls that he really is a king. Wouldn’t trade that for the world.”

Bruce clapped him on the shoulder again and moved away. He turned back after a moment, to find Hal gazing after him. After a second, Hal smiled at him, a small smile which reminded Bruce that he hadn’t seen Hal really smile in a long time, and perhaps never directly at him. Unbidden, his chest panged. Bruce pasted on his best billionaire grin and zeroed in on a gang of women who were currently far too engrossed in Oliver’s story about the time he’d almost been sacrificed to a sex god on a first date.

\---

It was another month or so before they shared monitor duty again, and when Bruce arrived he found that Clark was still at the desk, laughing at a story Hal was telling. Bruce stayed in the shadows of the hallway, not wanting to interrupt.

“So this girl turns to me, just as we land, blinks, and is like ‘ _oh, who are you?’_ , and I can tell she’s properly disappointed. I try and be all cool like ‘ _I’m the Green Lantern! I’m here to save you!’_ but she just isn’t having it, looks all grumpy, and when I’m just about to take off and go back to, you know, save more people from a sea monster the size of the Empire State, she grabs my hand. I’m thinking that this is my moment, I’m about to get a good luck kiss off a fan, and she’s all _‘do you think you could introduce me to Batman? I think he’s just gorgeous, and I’ll kick myself forever if I don’t ask’._ ”

“And what did you say?” Clark snorted, sipping from an oversized mug of coffee and leaning towards Hal, obviously intent on the story.

“I said that Batman only dated guys,” Hal choked in response, throwing himself back in his chair. “I fake-outed Batman, for fuck’s sake. My only saving grace is that she definitely thought I was only saying it because she’d pissed me off, so she just stormed off. Didn’t even say thanks. Otherwise I’d have met the pointy end of the Bat-bayonet, if it even exists.”

Clark laughed again, shaking his head. “Smooth, Lantern.” Bruce knew he wasn’t imagining it when Clark turned to him and raised an eyebrow. Of course Clark knew he was there, what good was super-hearing if people could stand in shadows ten feet away and he couldn’t sense it. The quirked eyebrow, though, that spelled trouble. Bruce was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant, it related to a conversation they’d had at the Wayne gala pretty soon after he’d abandoned Ollie’s self-love-in.

“Hey, I try my best! People love Hal Jordan, don’t get why they don’t see it in GL. Girls even love Arthur for fuck’s safe, and he actually smells like Gotham Harbour in July. Maybe it’s because the green looks a bit toxic.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Clark responded, standing up. “It’s that people don’t like your style, not that you ignore all civilians just to banter with Bats.”

“Nope, not true.” Hal swivelled in his chair to look at the monitor again, twiddling with a nob to get the zeta-tube up and running. “I do just as much legwork as the rest of you, on zero reward. Enough to make a guy’s heart break, I’m telling you.”

“And yet I happen to know for a fact that Unknown Sexy Fireman asked for your number a couple of months ago in Blüdhaven and you pretended that you didn’t swing that way,” Clark replied accusatorially. “A blatant lie, considering you made us all put up with that god-awful FBI agent at Lois’ birthday.”

“What can I say, I don’t fancy firemen. Sue me.”

Clark snorted again, this time derisively, flickering his eyes over to Bruce with another wry grin. “Keep lying to yourself, Hal, and it’ll start to feel true.”

“Profound, Supes. Remind me to endorse you for psychiatry on LinkedIn.”

Clark shrugged and flashed a look at Bruce again, making it apparent that the time to appear was now. “I think I’m employable enough as is, thanks. Already got some pretty ace scores for ‘saving the world’ and ‘flying unaided’.” Bruce passed Clark in the doorway, nodding brusquely at him.

“’Ace scores’, oh my god. Back to Kansas with you,” Hal guffawed, spinning in his chair to watch him go. For a second, his grin stayed light and airy in a way Bruce barely recognised, a glint in his eye which Bruce imagined was exactly how Hal looked when he saw something he wanted. As he clocked Bruce, his grin only got wider. Interesting. “Oh, hey Bats. Was wondering when you were going to show up.”

Bruce took the seat Clark had just vacated, propping his arms up on the monitor and starting to tap away at the monitor, searching for the most pressing issue to deal with. It didn’t really take two people to man the monitor, anyway, especially not two people who didn’t have much to say to each other. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce could see that Hal was still grinning, scrolling aimlessly through reports on the monitor.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, Hal doing mission reports while Bruce attempted to fine-tune the hydraulics on the main flight doors of the Watchtower, the silence only broken by Hal occasionally snorting at an error in a mission report, reading the funniest bits out. _Hey, hey, Bruce, get this: Wally took minutes at the League meeting last week. ‘Can’t remember what happened next, remembered a meme I’d seen earlier and spent roughly ten minutes trying not to laugh.’_ After an hour or so, Hal’s phone beeped, the shrill noise puncturing the silence. Hal grabbed his iPhone off the desk, and Bruce noticed that his old phone case with the pattern of paper airplanes was gone, replaced with a red shell emblazoned with the Flash’s logo. Bruce wasn’t surprised, dares weren’t exactly rare in the League. He had it on good authority that, next time Hal had to get Oliver out of a sticky situation, Oliver had to get a tattoo of the GL logo somewhere, location unspecified. He tapped at the screen for a bit, and then groaned, grabbing a pen and scribbling _pick up gift from Giuseppe’s!!_. Bruce waited, not sure if his input was required.

“Hey B?” asked Hal after a moment, voice strangely level.

Bruce grunted, didn’t look up. His chest had started aching again, and he resolved to go and speak to Leslie about it as soon as his duty ended.

“Are you free this weekend?”

Bruce looked up now, pulling the cowl down and off his face. “Why?”

Hal blinked at him uncertainly, letting his own mask fade off his face. He screwed his mouth up, biting his plush bottom lip, and ran his hand through his hair in what Bruce by now recognised as a nervous gesture. He continued to stare.

“Hal?”

“Sorry, sorry. I just assumed you’d say no immediately, didn’t expect to get this far. Um.”

“Um?” Bruce parroted, starting to move back to his work.

“Would you be able to come to Carol’s wedding with me on Saturday? I said I’d bring a plus one, but then with going off world and everything I totally spaced. Plus, I was kind of hoping I’d have a proper SO by now, rather than being, you know,” he waved a hand to demonstrate himself. “Alone and miserable.”

“No damsels in distress or firemen you could call on?”

Hal froze, narrowing his eyes and staring Bruce down. “Maybe I’d rather have a playboy billionaire-cum-vigilante, mix it up a bit.” There was something about his gaze which made Bruce’s heart speed up, and something made him very glad that Hal had found the one woman alive who would rather sleep with Batman than the Green Lantern, and that he was the one person alive who would turn down a night with a fireman. Bruce checked himself, quickly, reminding himself of the rule: don’t drag other people into his mess, and no sleeping with teammates. Even teammates whose mouth did something that made the pain in his chest let up, just a little bit.

Bruce gave a wry grin, the mere quirking of lips being the most that he ever allowed when in the cowl. “Normal wedding dress-code?”

Hal blinked at him again, mouth guppying open and closed unattractively. Well, on anyone else it would have been unattractive. On Hal, it looked amusing, but somehow still appealing. Bruce really needed to get out more. Just as his mind started roving to what the exact position of Hal’s mouth at that moment could be good for, and felt his cock shift slightly, he decided it was time to move on. “And I’m assuming this would be in Coast City?”

“Yes, yes, God, sorry. Morning suits and at the Holy Ascension in Coast City, starts 2pm.” Hal stared at Bruce for a second. “You sure about this? I know we aren’t exactly friends, but Wally’s babysitting and Oliver’s on a ‘sorry for getting the Palm Beach condo attacked by the Yakuza’ vacation with Dinah, and to be honest I couldn’t think of any of the other League members I’d want to spend like four hours with.” He paused, seemingly suddenly self-conscious. “I know we haven’t always got on.”

“I’m sure, and I’ll meet you at your place at 1pm.” Always wanting to keep the upper hand, and feeling oddly vulnerable, Batman stood up and marched off, cape snapping behind him, aiming for the bay doors to do some measuring. Halfway out onto the gangway connecting the monitor room to the outer corridor, Clark fell into step with him. Bruce had given up on trying to keep tabs on Clark, was used to having his two-tone friend drop in unannounced to offer pearls of wisdom.

“Its happening!” Clark exclaimed, his own cape drifting regally behind him. The benefits of not having to worry about being shot, Bruce mused, and having a cape as a fashion statement rather than a crucial layer of protection.

“Care to clarify?”

“Well, firstly, you’re smiling. That’s worth noting alone. Secondly, after who knows how long of pining, you are finally going on a date with Hal. I hope you’re excited. What are you wearing?”

Bruce turned and glowered. It was true that Clark had been telling him to _just ask him out already, damn it_ for over a month now, but that was because the only time Clark had come up against someone as strong-minded as him in the workplace, he had married her. It was only in the last week or so that Bruce had truly accepted it: he wanted Hal. What for yet, and why he wanted it so badly after such a short time, he couldn’t quite tell. All he knew was, when he was with Hal, things felt better.

“Okay then, don’t tell me. But don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Clark stopped walking then, allowing Bruce to march away.

\---

As it turned out, they never made it to the wedding. Instead, they came up against mystery aliens with unknown motives, and wasn’t that just a treat. Not that it hadn’t been avoidable, at least as far as Bruce was concerned. From where he was hunched behind an upturned cop car, he suddenly felt someone land heavily next to him, and his eyeline became tinged with green. They were in a firefight, and Bruce knew it was a low blow and not exactly the right time for it, but he was angry. “Maybe, if you weren’t doodling in mission briefing, we could have dealt with this a little better,” he spat.

Another alien landed metres from them, and Hal cut it neatly in half with a construct shaped like an oversized axe. Bruce could hear his heavy breathing, was oddly glad that Hal was having a hard time. “Or, perhaps, if you’d just let me do my job, which, as we all know, is _dealing with aliens,_ this wouldn’t have happened,” he shot back. As he spoke, the axe transformed into an enormous baseball bat, which he used to smack another incoming projectile back at the alien ship. “But no, Spooky knows it all, knows exactly how to deal with delicate diplomatic negotiations, can defend the Earth single-handedly using only his own immense intellect, which in normal day to day life isn’t even enough to pay attention to his team.”

Bruce sneered back at him, opening his mouth to retort, ignoring the ripping pain in his chest which had erupted from the minute he’d entered the briefing room. He didn’t even get to start his sentence when his vision blacked out.

 

He woke up slowly, his first feeling something cold and hard against his back. A surgical table, perhaps? He twitched slightly, reaching around better to assess his surroundings, satisfied when his suspicions proved correct. Then the ache in his chest started, worse than it had ever been before, burning through him and making him writhe. He let out a meek pant, gripping the edges of the table with calloused hands and white knuckles. Seconds later, it stopped, as soon as it had come, and Bruce sighed in relief, waiting a moment to check it wouldn’t come back again before working out a new plan of attack. He cracked his eyes open slowly, letting the low light filter in. He was in the Cave, which was good. Better than he’d hoped, actually.

“Oh, he’s awake,” called a voice above him, which he slowly placed as being Dick’s. The tone of disdain did it. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” he growled in response, throwing his legs over the side of the table, and twisting into sitting position. “What happened?”

“Massive electric shock from one of the aliens, who it turns out can shoot electricity from their eyes,” replied Tim, who seemed to be going through their old sepia documents on Poison Ivy. “Hal pulled you out.”

“Hal?”

“Oh god, he’s forgotten me,” came a joking voice from behind him. Bruce’s neck hurt too much to turn, he just waited for the person to come around to be in front of him. He knew who it was, anyway.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s possible,” Bruce replied, wincing as he attempted to shift position. Hal was carrying a thick pad of paper, which was covered in scribbles. Presumably a log for the Lanterns, if he’d done it already. Invasions by species previously thought incapable of fight was a big one, in Oan terms, and the little green men were the only ones Hal ever prioritised.

“Aww, don’t pretend like you wouldn’t miss me.” Bruce was only mildly infuriated to realise that, once again, Hal’s presence had stilled the ache in his chest, and that Hal had apparently reverted to his cockiest possible persona in the face of catastrophe. “That was a nasty bolt you took though, Spooky. You alright?”

Bruce considered him, staring into his eyes. They really were very green, and flashed entrancingly in the low light of the Cave. His mother had had beautiful green eyes, and generally they brought back memories of happy days in the orchard, evenings in the parlour next to piano. Hal’s eyes, though, were shot through with yellow, gem-like rather than the apple clarity of Martha Wayne. Bruce fancied that they were even better without the suit, looked brighter, more mischievous. “I’ll be fine. Could one of you help me re-wrap this wound, please?”

Dick started forward, wound pad at the ready, but quickly backed off when he met Bruce’s eye. Had he been glaring? Maybe, but sue him, he was in pain and right now he wanted a little bit of sympathy off the irritatingly smug man leaning against one of the structural beams.

“Dammit Bruce, I’m a space cop not a doctor,” Hal joked, grabbing the gauze and antiseptic off a table to replace the old bandages on Bruce’s chest.

Bruce scoffed. “Please, no. Not a _Star Trek_ fan. Not you.”

“Oh, come on!” Hal exclaimed. “Captain Kirk is a true role model. Hear me out, come on!”

Bruce continued to stare at him, one brow quirked. He felt his lip twitch into a smile, let it happen. “I remain to be convinced.”

“Come on, as space heroes go he’s totally got it all down. He’s runs a damn good ship, brilliant captain to his men, suave with the ladies, never lets the bad guys get him down. Dodgy taste in uniform, but who am I to judge?” Hal considered his speech as he daubed at Bruce’s chest with antiseptic, slowly starting to remove the old bandage. The faint remains of his soul mark were barely visible to the naked eye, but they still itched. Hal hurriedly covered the wound, leaving some of the mark open to the air. He applied micropore tape liberally, before grabbing his pad and tearing the top leaf off.

“Okay, Bruce. There are some space movies you _have_ to watch, you heathen. No ifs, no buts.” He shook the biro dramatically, touching the nib to his mouth as though it was a quill. Bruce smirked.

As the pen hit the paper, Bruce’s chest started to ache again. He watched Hal scrawl out _Total Recall, but the 1990 one with Arnie_ , trying to consider what to say in response, when suddenly someone gasped. Maybe it was him. On his chest, partially obscured by bandage, the same words stencilled themselves. He snapped his eyes up to Hal’s, largely unaware of Dick dashing from the room, pursued by Tim.

“Well, that’s a turn up for the books,” Hal murmured, peering at Bruce’s chest and then the paper. He looked backwards and forwards a couple of times, apparently processing. Bruce let him, lost for words himself. He was transported temporarily back to under that tree at Gotham Academy, to the years before, desperately picturing a beautiful girl with long auburn hair and beautiful green eyes like his mother. Hal was somehow exactly what he’d pictured, and a million miles apart. Beautiful, though. “Here, just check it.”

Bruce looked at him incredulously. “Check it?”

“Yes, Spooky, check it,” he thrust the pen and pad at Bruce, before yanking the zip down on his flight suit, and turning so that his muscular right shoulder was right under Bruce’s nose. “Write something.”

Bruce considered Hal’s now-naked chest and tanned shoulder, and then the pad. Considered the man in front of him, with his chequered past and shining future, his quick mouth and quicker temper, his unfailing loyalty and unending will. A man who had spent his life serving for others, with others, and who was prepared to give up everything for his friends, his team, and his Corps. Tim had been wrong, when he’d called Hal a Bizarro Bruce. He _was_ Bruce, but in technicolour rather than shadow. With significantly less flourish than Hal had, he started writing. Hal watched his shoulder rather than the pad, and grinned when the words _Kiss me_ etched themselves in Bruce’s neat hand. “Aww, B, thought you’d never ask.”

Hal leaned forward, into Bruce’s space, and although it should have seemed like looming, which Bruce hated, instead he felt safe in some strange way, having to look up slightly to catch the glint of Hal’s eyes. Bruce reached forwards, fitting his hands around Hal’s hipbones, and marvelling at the heat of Hal’s body, of his unmarred skin, so different to Bruce’s own. In turn, Hal ruffled Bruce’s hair, pushing it back off his face like he normally did to himself when he was nervous. After a moment of just touching, Hal finally got impatient, pushed closer, and knocked their noses together lightly, playfully. It was the foreplay of children, of those the age of Bruce himself when he’d given up on soulmates. It warmed Bruce in ways he could not name, could not understand. Bruce could smell his own bodywash, presumably borrowed from the Cave shower, alongside a warm, musky smell that was unmistakably Hal. He opened his mouth slightly as Hal drew a warm thumb across his lower lip, moving one of his hands up to behind Hal’s neck and rubbing slow circles in his hairline. Hal took this as the invitation it was, and finally pressed their lips together.

It was chaste, in a way that only the first kiss of many, the first kiss after so much, could be. Dry lips against dry lips, more getting a lay of the land than anything more. Even so, Bruce reckoned, it was perfect.

\---

It took Bruce about a week to recover enough that the evil mastermind duo of Hal and Alfred would let him off bed rest. In that time, he’d been forced to sit through every one of Hal’s list of space films, some more than once, and had been rewarded with nothing more than the odd peck on the lips. It was enough to drive him to distraction, but in each moment he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. With Hal next to him, feet kicked up on the sofa and head on his shoulder, he felt more at home, more secure, than he had since that night in Crime Alley.

That wasn’t saying he wasn’t very much looking forward to what was about to happen, though. As he sat quietly, allowing Alfred to remove his final set of bandages, he considered the night’s events, what would be. Tim had already gone to bed ready for school in the morning, Dick wasn’t in the house and had returned to Blüdhaven. Tomorrow was Alfred’s day off, which meant he would allow himself a rare lie-in. Somewhere upstairs, Hal was getting ready to go to sleep, presumably currently in the master bedroom. As soon as Alfred was done, they exchanged pleasantries, and Bruce made his way upstairs.

The door to his bedroom was ajar, lights behind it dim, and as he went into his room he found Hal sitting cross-legged on what had become his side of the kingsize bed, black tartan pyjama pants contrasting with the steel grey sheets. “Hey,” he murmured as Bruce came in. “Feeling better?”

Bruce nodded, discarding his shirt on a chair by the door. He hadn’t been wearing it anyway, hadn’t seen the point of putting it back on when he was on his way to bed. “Back to normal, I hope.”

Hal grinned impishly. “The new normal, I assume,” he replied in the same low tone, which was quickly changing from one of polite interest to something filled with intent. “Where instead of standing here acting like we’re on monitor duty on a particularly slow Thursday afternoon, you come straight over here and kiss me like your life depends on it.”

Bruce didn’t need telling twice, had always been a quick learner. With sure-footed steps he went straight to the bed, climbing neatly over the boxstool at its foot to hover over Hal, forcing him backwards with Bruce on top of him, bracketing Hal’s head with his hands against the mattress and supporting his own weight. Hal went back willingly, giving out a near-silent gasp, lying down and reaching up to trace lines across Bruce’s chest, following years’ worth of scars. Bruce leaned down to peck Hal on the lips, the jawbone, before starting to pepper his way down Hal’s body with light kisses, loving the way Hal shivered and writhed. He could feel the heat of Hal’s cock against his belly, even through his pants, and he smiled at the thought of Hal working himself up, the tension, getting ready for this. Bruce couldn’t judge, he’d done the same on the torturously slow walk up the stairs with Alfred.

“Tease,” Hal accused, as Bruce reached his hipbones and licked, making Hal cant his hips wantonly. He only spurred Bruce on, and so Bruce returned his attention to Hal’s upper chest, kissing his way back up Hal’s torso and licking a broad strip across his nipples, making him gasp. One moment he was considering exactly what to do to make Hal scream, and the next he was being pulled up by the shoulder blades, Hal muttering _up, up_ as he did so, until their faces were level.

“This is all very nice,” Hal began, and Bruce reached down to ghost a hand over his cock to make him gasp. “Yes, yes, you’ve proved you point,” he moaned. “But right now? Right now I just want you to kiss me. Please? I’ve always loved your mouth,” he traced his own fingers across Bruce’s face, pulling his lower lip down with his thumb and groaning when Bruce sucked it into his mouth. “Oh God, what have I got myself into.”

Bruce dropped his head, finally giving Hal the kiss he craved, their tongues meeting with what felt like electric heat, bodies grinding against each other as the kiss deepened. After what could have been a moment, could have been an age, Hal started to shuck Bruce out of his pants, Bruce’s hands still buried in Hal’s beautiful chestnut hair. As soon as Bruce’s cock sprang free, Hal started fighting with his own pyjamas, and Bruce drew back, marvelling as Hal stripped completely, revealing a faultless physique, even tan, lickable muscle plains stretching from collar bone to ankle.

“Nothing you weren’t destined for,” he replied, and went back to debauching Hal with gusto.  


End file.
